Gambling addiction help in Austria

Verified helplines

Helplines and online chat

The toll-free Spielerschutz hotline is 0800 202 304. Calls are confidential and the line refers people on to regional counselling centres. It is worth knowing who runs it: the hotline belongs to Playsponsible, the player-protection platform of the Casinos Austria and Österreichische Lotterien group, so it is funded by operators rather than by the state. It is a real service and staffed for this purpose; independent counselling is available in parallel.

Spielsuchthilfe is an outpatient treatment centre covering prevention, counselling, therapy and aftercare for people who gamble and for their relatives. Its own description of the terms is short: free of charge, confidential, anonymous on request, available throughout Austria.

Self-exclusion

There is no Austrian equivalent of the German OASIS register or the Dutch Cruks as of September 2026. Nothing links the operators together, so a single form will not shut the door everywhere. You apply per company:

• Casinos Austria and WINWIN - a Selbstsperre for 6 or 12 months, or indefinitely. Both also offer a visit limitation (Besuchslimitierung) if you want to cap how often you go rather than stop; WINWIN additionally offers a loss limit.
• win2day - self-exclusion only, granted for an indefinite period with a minimum term of six months.

Playsponsible states the split explicitly: a limitation or exclusion for Casinos Austria AG, WINWIN or win2day has to be arranged for each of them separately. Applying is free. You can send a printed form with a copy of your ID by post, use email or the online contact form, ask in person at a casino or outlet, or set it in your win2day account. For venues the block applies from the next working day at the latest; for win2day it applies once you receive the confirmation email.

Because sports betting is licensed by the individual Länder and foreign online casinos hold no Austrian licence at all, none of this reaches them. If those are where you play, the exclusion has to be built on your own devices instead - see apps that block gambling sites and our comparison of self-exclusion schemes by country.

Blocking gambling payments and sites

With no central register, the strongest controls available in Austria are the ones you install yourself: blocking software on every phone, tablet and computer you own, and a limit or exclusion at each operator you have used. Set them in one sitting rather than one at a time, because a half-finished block is the version that fails at 1am.

Ask your bank whether it can decline gambling merchants on your card - some banks in Europe do this, but Austria has no shared, guaranteed scheme, so treat any answer as specific to your bank. Removing the payment method entirely (deleting saved cards, closing e-wallet accounts) is under your control and takes ten minutes.

Free treatment and counselling

Counselling at Spielsuchthilfe is free, confidential and anonymous on request, and it covers therapy and aftercare rather than a single conversation. Relatives are treated as clients in their own right.

For clinical care, the position changed this year. Since 2026, people insured with the Österreichische Gesundheitskasse (ÖGK) can receive clinical-psychological treatment as a benefit in kind - that is, at the insurer's cost rather than yours. It is arranged through a nationwide service point on 0800 10 02 03. Two conditions apply: you need a medical examination first to rule out organic causes of the condition, and you have to show proof of that examination before the second session.

Support for family and friends

Spielsuchthilfe works with relatives of people who gamble as well as with the people gambling, on the same free and confidential terms, and the Spielerschutz hotline takes calls from family members. That matters more in Austria than in countries with a central register: because no third party can trigger a nationwide block here, the practical options for a partner or parent are counselling, money separation and a conversation, not an administrative switch.

Our guide on helping someone with a gambling problem covers what to say, and what to do about gambling debt covers the money side, including why paying it off silently tends to make the next round bigger.

Gambling law and the regulator

Gambling in Austria is supervised by the Federal Ministry of Finance. The ministry's own framing is that because of the social risks, gambling is in principle reserved to the federal state - a monopoly exercised through a licensing system with a limited number of strictly supervised licences, with addiction prevention and youth protection named as core objectives of the Gambling Act (Glücksspielgesetz, GSpG).

The minimum age is 18. Playsponsible cites sections 25(1) and 5(4) of the GSpG for casinos and WINWIN venues, and the same limit applies to registering and playing on win2day and to buying lottery products or collecting prizes. Sports betting is not classified as gambling under the GSpG: it is regulated by each of the nine Länder, and every Land licence also sets 18 as the minimum age.

Online games of chance fall under the federal monopoly, and win2day, run by Österreichische Lotterien, is the licensed Austrian site. Foreign online casinos accessible from Austria hold no Austrian licence, which means their limits, their exclusions and their complaint handling are governed by whatever the operator decides. The helplines directory lists lines outside Austria.